Encore Cremorne Office Building / Fieldwork

Architects: Fieldwork
Year: 2023
Photographs: Tom Ross
Landscape Designers: Openwork
Builders: Hacer Group
Interiors: Mim Design Studio
Services Engineers: Stantec
Town Planning: Contour Consulting
ESD Consultants: Green Factory
Heritage Consultant: Bryce Raworth
Developers: Monno Projects
Structural & Civil Engineers: Webber Design
Fire Engineers: Omnii
Building Surveyors: Reddo
Access Consultants: Architecture and Access
City: Cremorne
Country: Australia

Encore Cremorne, designed by Fieldwork, merges a new 7-story glazed office tower with a carefully restored early 20th-century red brick warehouse in Melbourne’s Cremorne. The design celebrates Cremorne’s character with new openings and plantings along laneways, enhancing pedestrian activity. The building features a fully glazed southern façade, pleated to reference neighboring saw-tooth roofs, and employs ceramic frit for thermal performance. The rooftop garden and terrace offer outdoor workspaces with city views, while the podium integrates with the heritage structure. Fieldwork’s design skillfully respects the site’s history and urban context.

Encore cremorne office building / fieldwork

Set in the dense urban fabric of Melbourne’s Cremorne, on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri and Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation, Encore Cremorne by Fieldwork combines a new 7-story glazed office tower with an existing early 20th-century red brick warehouse, formerly a Nuttelex factory and recording studio. The warehouse has been carefully retained, restored, and built around.

In consultation with Heritage Consultant Bryce Raworth, the warehouse’s original bricked-in windows have been reinstated, and new apertures introduced to offer multiple entry points to the ground floor spaces and improve the pedestrian interface. Cremorne’s suburban character of small laneways and narrow streets is celebrated along the site’s northern boundary, where new openings and pockets of planting enliven the laneway as a vibrant pedestrian route. Quino Holland, Co-Director of Fieldwork, said that the goal was to promote activity in the laneway and tell a story through activation.

The building’s service core is located to the north, protecting it from harsh light and allowing for a fully glazed southern façade that provides well-lit and naturally ventilated work environments. The glass curtain wall floats above the single-story heritage façade, folding away from the southwest corner and eastern interface, creating breathing room and enabling the building to be viewed from all angles.

To mediate the scale and intricacy of the low warehouse with the tower above, the glazed southern elevation features a pleated, three-dimensional profile, gently referencing the neighboring saw-tooth roofs. Ceramic frit embedded in the glass mitigates the need for external shading structures, with a mist-like finish that softens reflections, provides a fine grain to internal occupants, and improves thermal performance and glare.

As the tower form wraps to the west, a series of vertical glass fins provide solar shading from the hot afternoon sun. To the north, the extent of glazing is reduced with a veil of ribbed, precast concrete, which echoes the pleated language of the architecture at a micro-scale and effectively minimizes heat gain. The northern façade’s elongated windows are covered with corrugated perforated metal screens, lending shade and privacy to the stair and bathroom spaces within.

Collaborating with Openwork, a first-floor landscaped terrace and rooftop garden offer vibrant outdoor settings for work and leisure. The rooftop’s vegetation spills to the edge of the building, with a series of nooks and seating arrangements creating communal spaces and functional work zones with expansive city views. Bespoke arbor structures, designed to be softened with lush creepers over time, create “green grottos” for gathering, enhanced with integrated power and USB charging points.

To the southeast, a brick podium anchors a new garage entry shrouded in perforated corrugated mesh. This volume folds in to highlight the heritage building corner, creating a generous public realm with bike parking, landscaping, and a brick bench seat. The podium’s pleated brickwork is woven beneath the overhanging glass tower, creating a strong shadow-line junction to the heritage façade below. Quino Holland said that these architectural moves effectively break down the building mass, making it less imposing on the street.

Skillfully synthesizing the site’s history, streetscape, building occupants, and public, Fieldwork has crafted a holistic built gesture that is respectful, dynamic, and comfortable to occupy. Encore Cremorne provides excellent amenities to the district, delivering a highly refined built outcome that enhances its local context.